Mike Nichols column: Legal system separates Romeos from rapists

There's a long-standing canard in this state that prosecutors commonly treat Romeos like rapists.

State Rep. Roger Rivard apparently is one of the believers. Ten months ago, he told a reporter for the Chetek Alert that Wisconsin is actually "creating criminals" and said he was open to a so-called Romeo-and-Juliet bill that would protect teenage couples from statutory rape prosecution.

Of course, that's not all he said.

Rivard spoke to the reporter not long after 17-year-old Dennis Veldman was accused of assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the Chetek-Wayerhaeuser High School band room. Some of Veldman's fellow students had reacted by wearing "We love Dennis" T-shirts, carrying signs, starting a Facebook page to "Free denny V," and suggesting that the girl had agreed to have sex but later changed her story.

Rivard chimed in by recounting how, back when he was a teenager, his father offered a warning.

"Some girls rape easy," the legislator said he was told, a comment that meant, according to the Chetek Alert story, girls might consent but then change their minds later.

The remark was unearthed and then seized upon by the national media recently, largely because Rivard - in the middle of a race for re-election - had for a time been endorsed by Paul Ryan. It's seen as a political story about the impact on Ryan. Never mind, I guess, the impact on 14-year-old girls.

A few things have happened in Barron County since the story first quietly appeared last December. Veldman pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree sexual assault. And Rivard, belatedly realizing how rightly offended much of the free world is by his remark, has changed his tune and now says he realizes that sexual assault is, unfortunately, a crime that is "misunderstood."

I wonder, based on another quote in the Chetek Alert story from last December, whether he really understands that, though.

"If it's rape, it's rape," the 60-year-old legislator was also quoted as saying. "If it's not, it's not." When sex is consensual, his logic reportedly goes, it's not rape. Except that when kids are involved, his logic is faulty, at best.

Under current Wisconsin law, children younger than 16 are legally incapable of consenting to any sort of sexual contact. Anyone having contact with a child younger than 16 could theoretically be charged with a felony. Anyone, other than a spouse, who has intercourse with a child younger than 18, in the meantime, could theoretically be charged with a misdemeanor.

That does, it is true, leave room for prosecutors to make bad charging decisions. But there's little evidence that sort of prosecutorial abuse is happening. For instance, I believe Barron County District Attorney Angela Beranek, whose office prosecuted Veldman and who says the girl never consented, when she tells me she'd never charge a couple of consenting 17-year-olds.

Taking away prosecutorial discretion to use the current statutory rape laws would be a mistake for a fundamental reason.

The majority of kids who have intercourse before the age of 16 say they feel like they had a "forced sexual experience," according to Michelle Oberman, a California lawyer who wrote a paper called Regulating Consensual Sex With Minors: Defining a Role for Statutory Rape.

Sexual encounters, she points out, range across a spectrum that includes the sort of coercion that would be hard to prosecute without strong statutory rape laws protecting teenagers who, due to fear or confusion or inexperience, "consent" to unwanted sex.

Romeo and Juliet is a classic tale of two star-crossed kids. Were it only real. In the real world, young girls dream about love. But they too often experience coercion or something worse - followed, at least in one instance, by nasty T-shirts and reiterations of old and offensive fatherly advice that make real-life experiences anything but a romance. More, in fact, like a tragedy.

Mike Nichols is a syndicated columnist, author and senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The views expressed in his column are his own. Reach him at MRNichols@wi.rr.com.

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Mike Nichols column: Legal system separates Romeos from rapists

There's a long-standing canard in this state that prosecutors commonly treat Romeos like rapists. State Rep. Roger Rivard apparently is one of the believers. Ten months ago, he told a reporter for

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